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Welcome to Thrillbent 3.0!

Two years ago, we launched Thrillbent.com, a curated platform/foundry for state-of-the-art comics in digital form. Looking back, I honestly can’t believe we’ve come as far as we have, but…wow. With the help, support, and enthusiasm of some of the most forward-thinking creators in comics, we’ve helped define what digital comics should be—can be—and we’re constantly inventing new storytelling techniques for the medium (mostly because I’ve been smart enough to ally Thrillbent with visionaries like Balak, Alex DeCampi, Tim Gibson, Jeremy Rock and others—you can see the full list here).

I’ve always been open with you, our readers, about not only our successes but our challenges—chief among them, how to pay for all this. How to streamline that social contract between us, the content providers, and our fans, who are willing to pay a fair price for what we provide so that we can keep bringing the new.

On our storefront, we’ve experimented with different models—some downloads with fixed prices, some pay-what-you-will, all DRM-free—and that’s been helpful but unpredictable. We’ve always been resistant to putting up some sort of tip jar because (it’s a personal thing, no judgments) that just makes me uncomfortable. Still, we know we have a proven audience out there willing and eager to support us financially so we can continue to bring them new content, and we think we’ve finally figured out how to give readers that opportunity in form that nets them the most value.

This past weekend, we stealth-launched the Thrillbent iPad app. It’s a thing of beauty. If you’re so inclined, go check it out (and, yes, Android is in the works). Effective immediately, the Thrillbent website will sync up with it—make sure your name is on the mailing list for immediate notification—as we begin to roll out even more new series. There will still be free content on Thrillbent, there always will be—we’re big believers in the marketing power of “free”—but to that, we’re adding a “Hulu Plus” level of new content, if you will—the next wave of new Thrillbent comics, including, just for starters:

THE HOUSE IN THE WALL, a fantastic horror series by THE EIGHTH SEAL’S James Tynion IV and Noah J. Yuenkel and artist Eryk Donovan;

INSUFFERABLE: HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE, the next series of INSUFFERABLE adventures by myself, Peter Krause, Nolan Woodard and Troy Peteri;

THE BEST THING, an upcoming series by the Hugo- and John W. Campbell-award winning writer Seanan McGuire, whose audience and fan base eclipses my own;

The long-awaited return of THE DAMNATION OF CHARLIE WORMWOOD, maybe the best damn looking series we publish, and I would say that even if I didn’t own the joint, I promise;

and more to come on top of all of that—again, stay on the mailing list for updates and announcements throughout the summer.

That’s a lot of new content, and I’ll be blunt—to make sure our artists, colorists and letterers are compensated fairly, and to continue to build a base for other creators to redefine this medium in new and exciting ways, we can’t afford to give it all away for free the same way we’ve been doing. But neither do we want to create an unfair barrier to entry. Ultimately, what we arrived at was this: a monthly subscription model that allows access to all Thrillbent material past and present for the price of one print comic: $3.99.

For that $3.99, you’ll be able to read everything as it rolls out, the moment it’s posted. You’ll receive push and/or e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted. Create a subscription account and your info will be kept up-to-date on the website, the iPad app, and all future apps and platforms, meaning wherever you’re signed in, we’ll keep track for you of what you’ve already read and what’s new so you can tell at a glance where you are in any given series. And, yes, anything you’ve already purchased carries over to the new system, no worries there.

We honestly think that $3.99 (again, the price of one print comic) is a really, really good deal for what you’re getting (several new comics a month from award-winning creators, plus full access to the entire back catalog of over 250 existing comics). You can still purchase downloadable, DRM-free PDFs from our storefront if you want to read our comics offline or gift them or mash them up into dark Tumblr fantasies or what have you, and if you’ve already got an existing Thrillbent account, yes, your previous purchases transfer over to this new system.

Subscribe today either through the website or the app and don’t miss out on a thing as new content rolls out beginning next week. Subscribe today and—and—your immediate reward on top of all this is a free graphic novel by that Mark Waid guy and his art partner, Barry Kitson. You may have heard of it:

Yep. The years-out-of-print, I-am-asked-about-this-a-hundred-times-at-every-convention EMPIRE graphic novel as a DRM-free PDF so that as we launch into EMPIRE VOLUME TWO in the upcoming weeks on the site, you’ll be fully up-to-speed on What Has Come Before. It’s nearly 192 pages. This is the only way you can get it if you’ve never read it, because it’s been out of print for years. And for the next few weeks, it’s a free download for subscribers.

Subscribe. Get all your new content (and more to be announced—we’re constructing a calendar-list even now so you’ll know what’s coming and when). And if you’re a charter subscriber, you’ll immediately receive a link to the EMPIRE download which, I humbly suggest, is in and of itself worth way more than $3.99. But we think—we believe—it’ll drive traffic to and interest around Volume Two, we think it’s of service, and as I think we’ve proven repeatedly, we’re more comfortable giving than taking, anyway.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for being a part of what we’ve built and continue to build. As ever, if you have any questions or concerns, you can reach us through the contact e-mail. I think you’ll be excited by what we have to offer; I know I am.

72 thoughts on “Welcome to Thrillbent 3.0!”

compressaid:

I think this is a great idea, I can’t wait for the Android app (why do people always start with the niche OS? ;). The subscription doesn’t appear in the shop page right now. Also, will there be an annual subscription?

Actually, from my experience as a developer or manager of developers, they go for iOS because it’s more consistent. If you build for IOS, you cover every iPhone model, and it’s consistent across every single one. And it’s also the number one phone/Tablet in the world so you get a LOT of people with a single deployment. But with Android, you have forking issues. Not only with versions, but also with the providers and platforms. Android store fronts are different with Amazon (Kindles) vs Google vs some phone providers, etc. So, building for Android requires you to take a LOT more into account than iOS. So, while Android sales and phones are popular, and growing, they aren’t all the same and the deployment processes vary greatly.

Why did you choose PDF as the delivery format, as opposed to the more prevalent CBR or CBZ format? Less need to find an app to display them? Or are there other extras in the PDF that the other formats can’t carry?

And you can +1 the waiting list for an Android version. Tell you what, I’ll get the iDevice version if you can set it up that the eventual Android version can tie to the same account.

The Android version will definitely use the same account as the iOS app and the website. That way, if you own, say, an iPad and a Kindle, you would only need one subscription (once we have the Android app built, that is).

We looked at the CBZ numbers, and as far as I remember, they unfortunately didnt at the time support creating both formats. While CBZ/CBR is often more prevalent in certain audiences, not in most mainstream audiences, and as noted, does not require a specialized program.

@ John Rogers: CBZ/CBR/CB7 Don’t require specialized viewer, no more than PDF. CBZ/CBR/CB7 are just fancy names for zipped folder of ordered images using .ZIP, .RAR and .7zip format respectively. Hence the last letter of archive corresponds to format used.

You can use 7zip to open them all and extract the images, or vice versa. I love taking several shots and meshing them into a simple as peas ‘comic book’.

Mr. Waid, while I am a big fan of your work, and still tell the story of getting to meet you at WonderCon in SF many years ago, I have to express my concern about reliable content on this site. I hope this subscription service will serve as a commitment to getting content out in a timely manner. Many of the comics on this site still carry tag lines of “Every Monday” or the like, and don’t come anywhere close to meeting their deadlines. Due to my commitment to you as an artist, and because I support the business model you are trying to achieve, I am going to give you the opportunity to prove yourselves, which I sincerely hope you do. I doubt I am the only longtime Thrillbent follower who is somewhat skeptical. Good luck. I hope this works out marvelously.

We should alter that to establish that even the “every Monday/Wed/Friday” comics go in cycles. We always rest the series to bring in new series, so there are always gaps, we just haven’t changed the “Every X” title on them because they stay on that day. We’ll look at that.

However, we’ve laid out the content launch schedule for the subscription model, and we should be good through Comic-Con this year.

One thing that bugs me is that other people can’t read the previously available versions of comics. Will you guys be using the South Park model that only locks new comics, but keep the old ones free? Will we be able to pay for chapters whatever we want?

Each creator will decide where the unlock barrier is. I’ll admit, I don’t quite the appeal of rereading comics you’ve already read, but that’s me. We’re discussing this, as we are also discussing the CBZ files issue, as noted above. Right now, just getting the damn app to work is kind of the priority …

Just joined up with Thrillbent! Insufferable is amazing and addicting. Great way of utilizing the digital format in a creative way! I’m currently working on writing a few projects. After reading Insufferable, I am now trying to conceptualize how to take advantage of some of the digital tactics Insufferable has brought to my attention.

Will the app have the same loading issues that the site have? I downloaded my favorite comics a CBZ because I could easily view them, without images loading killing the flow. Will Charlie Wormwood at least be available through comixology?

Also, PDFs, why? I know the general public doesn’t care about CBZ, but fans do. The format is restrictive with no decent reader application on the desktop that caters to the comic book reader. I’ll probably rip your Empire PDF into a CBZ for my own use, but please consider it.

Also, make the distinction of free and premium comics on the front page. Thank you.

We’ve had the CBZ/PDF conversation a lot of times on here, it feels like. I am a person who prefers the PDFs, partly because I can transfer them onto my e-reader, while the CBZs won’t work. It means I can read some of these things on a plane or train or whatever, without having to worry about an internet connection. But that’s just me, maybe.

@Mudassir: I’m wondering what kind of Internet connection you have? The image files on the site and in the app are loaded from Amazon’s content delivery network, which is extremely fast. But the images are large (they have to be, to look good at full-size on a retina iPad) and as such they may take a long time to download over a slower connection.

I read comics on the site and in the app over my cell connection with very few loading problems, but I have a high-quality LTE connection. When I’m on WiFi, everything loads instantaneously.

I believe the folks at Thrillbent are looking into ways to cache more of the content in the app – for example, subscribers may eventually be able to take content offline, which would eliminate the latency problems. But if this is a problem you’re experiencing in general, then downloading the PDFs may still be your best option.

The file sizes are huge, but even the most detailed image is less than 500kb. My internet isn’t the fastest(4mb down), but when I load them through the url directly, it is instantaneous. Which is why I think it’s a latency issue, since I have 13 hops to the cloudfront server.

I subscribed on the 23rd, but now the app is telling me I need to subscribe to see stuff. Is this just the growing pains of launching the new app. Should I resubscribe? In regards to my prior post, will we be seeing new content soon?

I am considering a subscription, but feel wary due to the past few months of no-content for the series I had been following about the elves and such. There had been nothing since December. We finally got an explanation for why in April…four months later.

I wish you luck with the app and the subscription. If someone might explain to me that it will be easy to unsubscribe should content fail to flow with any regularity, I’ll be more inclined to give it a whirl.

And $3.99 for a comic book is still something of an extravagance IMHO. Like a lot of folks nowadays used to getting it free on the Internet, this has partially spoiled me, as has the library.

So far folks this is a Massive FAIL! First of all, according to the e-mail those of us on the waiting list received, we are supposed to get one month’s free subscription “Wait. I’ll do you one better. Because you’re on our mailing list and we genuinely value your loyalty, your first month’s subscription is free. You have more than earned that.” Sadly that is not the case since ITunes has all ready billed me for this month and my subscription clock is ticking. Secondly, despite subscribing on day one, the app still refuses to acknowledge my subscription, and when I attempt to resubscribe it tells me I already have a subscription. Yet, all locked content is still blocked. My strong advice. Don’t subscribe. If that seems harsh, notice my previous post from Friday went completely ignored.

My apologies for not getting back to you Friday. Unfortunately to get the one month free subscription you needed to follow the link in the email to purchase on our web site, and not purchase via the app. We should have made that clearer.

Our tech team has identified the problem and we expect to have it resolved soon. If you could, send your thrillbent.com account login (but not your password) to alex@thrillbent.com we can look at your account specifically, and email you directly as soon as it is fixed.

Again, our apologies for the bumpy start, we hope to have this resolved soon.

Love the content. I’ve subscribed via the website and used that no problem. Thought I’d give the app a try, but it won’t accept my login details. I know they’re correct because they work on the web site. Anything you can do to help would be appreciated.

I’m a huge fan of your work, but the only thing that’s been bugging me for a while is the latency of updates for the status of some of these comics. For example, will Arcanum return? If so, when? A timeline or even an estimate would be much appreciated.

Arcanum will return, but we can’t say for certain when yet. We’re also working on putting together a schedule for our readers so they know when to expect what. Until then, anyone on the listserve will get emails when new series launch and when old series return.

I’m feeling a bit dense here, but I admit to some confusion as to whether signing up for a subscription unlocks all Thrillbent content on the website as well as on the app. (All I have is an old school Kindle, so the app isn’t an option for me unfortunately.) I purchased a subscription through the website today and see that there are several comics in the store–Aw Yeah Comics, for instance, which I was hoping to read with my daughter–that still can’t be viewed without purchasing. The $3.99 price tag was worth it just to get Empire, but will I be able to read all of the “Hulu Plus” content through the website as well?

Really enjoying the content on the site so far. Loads of fresh and inventive storytelling. Thrillbent has given me a lot to think about in terms of what can be done with the medium in a digital context. I’m looking forward to whatever you all have planned next.

I’ve got to say, I too am a bit unclear as to how your subscription model benefits subscribers.

I don’t (and will never) own an Apple device but I do use a laptop and tablet to access thrillbent content.

I got the call to arms email to subscribe and duly did so expecting to have access that other web users couldn’t. However, I’m finding that I can access the latest and previous content on the website without logging in.

I thought maybe it was a browser thing, so I cleared the cookies and cache in my browsers and could still access the content.

I tried a laptop that’s never been used to visit your site and got the same result.

Is this a bug? A temporary thing? The policy for the website version?

Other than showing support for the content creators and Thrillbent (which I wholeheartedly agree with) I’m not understanding what I, as a subscriber get, that a non subcriber doesn’t. We both seem to get exactly the same service. Only I pay for mine.

The first four or so chapters of most of our comics are free to read so new users can see if they are interested in our content before they subscribe. The most recent chapter of many of our existing comics is also free. New comics – Empire Vol 2, for example – are usually going to be subscription only. I say “usually” and “many” because Thrillbent works with each of our creatives to plan exactly how much of their work will require a subscription.

… Well, this is a bit of a bind. I’d followed Arcanum and Eighth Seal avidly, and was seriously bummed when the updates all but dried up. Still, as the old adage goes, you get what you pay for – so when a free comic stops, I’ll check in intermittently to see if they restarted, but I won’t complain.

But then I come back, and find I have to pay for it. Trouble is, I’ve got no real evidence that even if I did pay for it, it’d show up and keep showing up before making the payment – maybe I’m not the target audience, but given the success Patreon and free-strip-sold-trades models seem to be getting, this feels astoundingly… old-school. Like, mid-early 2000s old-school. What was the motivation?

I dunno. Like I say, maybe I’m the wrong audience. But does the payment model come with a promise that these comics won’t go on hiatus too? Else this is as much a wager and a hope as it is a subscription, and that bothers me.

I subscribed for two months and then unsubscribed. 4$ is too much for just the dammnation of charlie wormwood. Without any kind of release schedule its not worth supporting for so little comic. It would be a better use of my money to come a back after 6 months and pay once to get all caught up.

@Jeremy: I see new chapters of Albert the Alien, Valentine, The Endling, Charlie Wormwood, Empire, and the House In the Wall all published in the last two months. I agree that a schedule would be nice, but it seems to me that they’ve really stepped up the content since the app was released.

I agree. I’m seeing a lot of new content appearing on a weekly basis and even though I’m paying more for my subscription than an American because of international currency rates, I personally feel as though I’m getting a lot for my money.

I’d pay the same amount for ‘The Damnation of Charlie Wormwood’ alone, since to me it’s like Thrillbent’s answer to Breaking Bad. It’s awesome.

I think these guys are on the right track and going to do more very impressive things.